A quotation from my current read

[resqgeek]

I don't know how they managed it, but the people responsible for the 1950s made a world in which pretty much everything was good for you. Drinks before dinner? The more the better! Smoke? You bet! Cigarettes actually made you healthier, by soothing jangly nerves and sharpening jaded minds, according to advertisements. "Just what the doctor ordered!" read ads for L&M cigarettes, some of them in The Journal of the American Medical Association where cigarette ads were gladly accepted right up to the 1960s. X-rays were so benign that shoe stores installed special machines that used them to measure foot sizes, sending penetrating rays up through the soles of your feet and right out the top of your head. There wasn't a particle of tissue within you that wasn't bathed in their magical glow. No wonder you felt energized and ready for a new pair of Keds when you stepped down.

From The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson.

Comments

[antof9.livejournal.com]

Gotta love that Bill Bryson!

[thebiblioholic.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed that book too. This is my favourite quote from it.

[resqgeek]

Yes, I enjoyed that passage as well.